I truly love and appreciate and respect Russian culture. But IMO Putin is destroying this country, or at least its international reputation. His antigay legislation is a disgrace, his jailing and destruction of his political opponents is immoral, and his decision to shelter Snowden is not only deeply hypocritical but also beyond insulting to the U.S.

Is Putin a dictator? Do you mean that U.S. regularly insults many other countries by sheltering the people who are escaping from those countries?

FBI records show that 85% of COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals that the FBI deemed "subversive",[7] including communist and socialist organizations; organizations and individuals associated with the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King, Jr. and others associated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Congress of Racial Equality and other civil rights organizations; black nationalist groups; the American Indian Movement; a broad range of organizations labeled "New Left", including Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen; almost all groups protesting the Vietnam War, as well as individual student demonstrators with no group affiliation; the National Lawyers Guild; organizations and individuals associated with the women's rights movement; nationalist groups such as those seeking independence for Puerto Rico, United Ireland, and Cuban exile movements including Orlando Bosch's Cuban Power and the Cuban Nationalist Movement; and additional notable Americans —even Albert Einstein, who was a member of several civil rights groups, came under FBI surveillance during the years just before COINTELPRO's official inauguration

Examples of surveillance, spanning all presidents from FDR to Nixon, both legal and illegal, contained in the Church Committee report:[32]
President Roosevelt asked the FBI to put in its files the names of citizens sending telegrams to the White House opposing his "national defense" policy and supporting Col. Charles Lindbergh.
President Truman received inside information on a former Roosevelt aide's efforts to influence his appointments, labor union negotiating plans, and the publishing plans of journalists.
President Eisenhower received reports on purely political and social contacts with foreign officials by Bernard Baruch, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
The Kennedy administration had the FBI wiretap a congressional staff member, three executive officials, a lobbyist, and a Washington law firm. US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy received the fruits of an FBI wire tap on Martin Luther King, Jr. and an electronic listening device targeting a congressman, both of which yielded information of a political nature.
President Johnson asked the FBI to conduct "name checks" of his critics and members of the staff of his 1964 opponent, Senator Barry Goldwater. He also requested purely political intelligence on his critics in the Senate, and received extensive intelligence reports on political activity at the 1964 Democratic Convention from FBI electronic surveillance.
President Nixon authorized a program of wiretaps which produced for the White House purely political or personal information unrelated to national security, including information about a Supreme Court Justice.

I can vouch this is true, because I worked for ONI when I was young in a menial capacity and had to file reports of this nature. Nowadays, it is no secret, because the reports themselves were de-classified.

WASHINGTON - Citing evidence that the FBI and local police are illegally spying on political, environmental and faith-based groups, the American Civil Liberties Union and its affiliates today filed multiple Freedom of Information Act requests around the country to uncover who is being investigated and why.

"The FBI is wasting its time and our tax dollars spying on groups that criticize the government, like the Quakers in Colorado or Catholic Peace Ministries in Iowa," said ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson. "Do Americans really want to return to the days when peaceful critics become the subject of government investigations?"

You know, we've been talking about how risky it is to hold a Games in a more repressive country, because we won't all be happy about some of that country's laws and practices. But the country takes a risk, too. If a government wants the prestige of holding an international event within its borders, that government will have to put up with the fact that all manner of people will show up to compete, and moreover that the world will be watching. The "wrong" sort of people will win some events, and even if they just stand on the podium, their very presence will be a testament to who and what they are. Then there are all the international reporters and what they say on their programs, which will beam out to the world.

When you look at it this way, as Matilda did, there's no reason for other countries to boycott the Olympics. The only country that might imagine any gain from boycotting the Olympics is Russia itself. Because if you want to keep your culture in a box, you can't open that box to let anyone else in.

I would say so. He has no serious political opposition and what he says goes. After serving two terms as President he could not run again in 2008 by constitutional mandate, so he propped up Medvedev as a puppet, Putin running the show as Prime Minister. Then he was elected President again in 2012, essentially without opposition. (Sort of like Ottavio Cinquanta setting aside the ISU constitution to extend his own rule last year. )

The fact that the people elected him does not bear on the question of whether he is a dictator or not. Robert Mugabe (age 90), the dictator of Zimbabwe for more than 30 years, was just reelected by a reported landslide of the popular vote.

No, I mean that in the United States the power of the presidency has grown over the years, outstripping the checks and balances that the constitution originally provided for. Too much power in the hands of one individual.

I just hope nobody gets extreme attention like attempting to desecrate a flag, they'll end up like what happened to taht American band that desecrated flags and peed on them, who is now banned in Ukraine and Russia. the Russian south is very conservative and a stronghold for the cossacks.

whatever happens outside stays in outside, respect a country once your inside its territory

But Putin, while visiting Finland on Tuesday, said he would rather not intervene in the case and noted that trying to navigate a diplomatic resolution was problematic.

"I'd prefer not to deal with this issue at all. It's like shearing a pig — too much squeaking, too little wool,'' Putin said. The Russian president said Snowden was free to leave Russia. "The sooner he chooses his final destination, the better it will be for us and him," Putin said.